Please porridge hot Please porridge cold

But just give it up if it's nine days old

I was visiting with Pat Muir at Stew
and Athana’s annual Christmas bash when it struck me how wonderfully bright and
vibrant she is. In all regards — physically, mentally, emotionally — Stew’s mom
is a model for aging gracefully, a fact I’m sure Jim Watts will attest to.

Sure I’d had a sip or two of port,
and the candlelight was golden and low, but I’m positive neither had anything
to do with me asking her, “Pat, what’s your secret?” She looked me square in
the eyes, hers bright and twinkling, and laughed. “Porridge!” she declared.

I swore my grandpa, who, except for
his final year, remained robust until he died at age 91, virtually lived on
porridge, starting each day with cooked oats, except Sundays when he made
hotcakes. And our new Minister of State for ActNow BC, Gordon Hogg, includes
porridge as part of his new fitness regime.

Tom Barratt is a big porridge eater,
buying steel cut oats at Caper’s before it spread beyond its original location
in West Van, and teaching me the subtlety of adding currants, not raisins,
which are too sweet.

At the mention of porridge, Jan
Gavin, who just called from her new home in England, promptly declared it the
best fuel for skiing. It’s good for your heart and good for your bowels and
lasts all day, she pointed out, before launching into a wonderful tale about
Bruce Charters’ dad — “a man the size of a grasshopper” — who’d lived all his
life on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

It was the early ’70s and Janine and
her then-husband, Tom, were off to do the West Coast Trail and had packed all
sorts of specialty backpacking foods one would dutifully pack in those days.

Bruce had put them in touch with his
dad, who explained that when he and his friends walked the trail, which they’d
done more than once, they never took anything but a pocketful of porridge — dry
form, of course — which they would nibble on, followed by a swig of water.

Every time they got hungry, they’d
sip a bit more water and the porridge would swell a little more in their
bellies, pushing hunger pangs away and propelling them onwards.